Acid_04: The final frontier

[Mutineer]

LOOks fine, yes, we need this trade for banking and adopt mercantenilism.
Do not forget to fire all specialists in Golden age, in order to use it fully.
ON a brigth side of having every warmonder posible around is slower pace of tech.

 

[uberfish]

ok:

Do Acid's suggested trade of Liberalism to Alex for banking and music and revolt. It would be very useful if we could get a couple GPs out to help us get to biology so I decide to include caste and pacifism in the revolt and hired 8 specialists in Washington and cancelled the knight. When we get the GA we will work cottages instead. New York hired some specialists too.

Switch research from chemistry to Constitution, if we don't get representation asap we are in serious trouble research wise. Anyway if we want to adopt a Draft strategy to fight Shaka we should be heading to Rifling not Chemistry.


turn 1: Shaka decides to raze the barbarian city in our territory


turn 2: Great artist spawned at Thebes, oh well we may find some good use of it in conquered Viking lands. Sell Music to shaka for 70 gold + map to see what's been conquered


turn 3: take Haithabu for loss of 1 treb and 1 mace


turn 4: Wang breaks free from Ragnar, I sign ceasefire so I can use the troops patrolling his border on the eastern front instead. We build some cottages


turn 5: Nidaros captured by Zulus. Toku will reopen borders and trade wine again now, so do so.


turn 6: Taj done. Fun fun.


turn 7: attempt to build Colossus in Philadelphia because it's a golden age and we can, and it'll be a very nice refund if we miss anyway


turn 8: Washington spawned a GS. He offers to part research printing press, I leave him for the next player to decide what to do with it. Generally fired specialists during this time and microed cities to use the GA.

Captured Uppsala just before Shaka's SoD gets there. Mark Twain writes a book about the war in the city in the hope that Nidaros will realise how much better we are than the Zulus and flip to us. We should try and get more culture in here.

Since most specialists have been fired to best exploit the golden age, I also get out of pacifism in favour of free religion.


turn 9: Shaka asks us to re-declare on Koreans, I don't dare refuse.


turn 10: Shaka razes Roskilde, and Ragnar who is now down to 1 island city vassalizes to him. Our random chariot gets ambushed and killed by a barbarian longbow.

Our troops are wounded and won't outrace Shaka to Pyongyang and Seoul... except by cheating. I cancel open borders with him, stranding 20 of his maces in no man's land we can reopen later. He drops to cautious, but being pleased is no guarantee he wouldn't backstab us anyway. We will be gaining another point or two of diplomatic relations due to shared military struggle with Korea in any case.


Constitution and colossus incoming in 2 turns, remember to check city micro when our GA finishes in 4. Memphis is set on wealth to help us get to constitution.

Hmm, I should probably have started Globe in Washington instead of the university currently under construction there. There's no way we can compete with Shaka militarily in the short term except by Rifle drafting. I wonder if we could get a defensive pact with Toku or Alex to deter him or maybe even a diplo win.

 

[Mutineer]

Bah, AI dying as flyes in this game, and mostly not by our hand.

Ragnar kill Wand in 10 turns and Shaka kill Ragnar in the same time.

Problem is, who will kill Shaka?
Really, even he drop in power a bit, his army still absolutly huge.

 

[Mark1031]

Well everything is working out well here. Now how can we stop Shaka from destroying us? Mano a mano vs a nut like Shaka on deity is not going to be pretty. Also I suspect there is no way diplomatically to keep him from going after us. He will. We better get ready.

 

[darrelljs]

Problem is, who will kill Shaka?
Really, even he drop in power a bit, his army still absolutly huge.

I don't believe the AI gets a discount for the Pascifism excess troop surcharge...that's a move from acidsatyr that has worked for me in the past.

Darrell

 

[uberfish]

This is why I don't like deity much. There is too much luck involved, if any of the AIs had randomly decided to declare war on us instead we would have been toast for sure. Against 40-unit offensive stacks that get almost free upgrades, it is impossible to maintain an effective defence either without utterly crippling your economy, so the only way to win is to try and manipulate the diplomatic system and hope not to be attacked.

 

[acidsatyr]

got it...............

 

[futurehermit]

This is why I don't like deity much. There is too much luck involved, if any of the AIs had randomly decided to declare war on us instead we would have been toast for sure. Against 40-unit offensive stacks that get almost free upgrades, it is impossible to maintain an effective defence either without utterly crippling your economy, so the only way to win is to try and manipulate the diplomatic system and hope not to be attacked.

But don't you think at the *very highest skill level* it should be nearly impossible to win? Otherwise, why is it the *very highest skill level*?

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

The "the very highest skill level", not "the very highest luck level", which is the distinction they are talking about here. Although, I don't see why it's lcuk because AI's are by definition algorithmic. It's the map generation and the butterfly effect that's luck-dependent, and unfortunately, good AI's make this too hard to predict even by the one that wrote the AI script. So in the final analysis, it's luck. (It's like saying a dice roll is not luck because it's governed by physics: it's luck, okay?)

 

[ThERat]

great turns, uberfish...I am always stunned how you people play the GP game...but to me that's a little too much of beancounting...it's not very intuitive...
what are we going to do with those 2 GP? Continue the GA we enjoy? Maybe we should.

How much land does Shaka have. If it is too much, we need to fight him to win, else Japan might be enough, but they have not fought and might sit on plenty of units...

 

[acidsatyr]

The "the very highest skill level", not "the very highest luck level", which is the distinction they are talking about here. Although, I don't see why it's lcuk because AI's are by definition algorithmic. It's the map generation and the butterfly effect that's luck-dependent, and unfortunately, good AI's make this too hard to predict even by the one that wrote the AI script. So in the final analysis, it's luck. (It's like saying a dice roll is not luck because it's governed by physics: it's luck, okay?)

Rolling of dice is governed by physics, its just that when you roll a dice you don't consider factors involved so any number you get is by "luck"

 

[futurehermit]

The "the very highest skill level", not "the very highest luck level", which is the distinction they are talking about here. Although, I don't see why it's lcuk because AI's are by definition algorithmic. It's the map generation and the butterfly effect that's luck-dependent, and unfortunately, good AI's make this too hard to predict even by the one that wrote the AI script. So in the final analysis, it's luck. (It's like saying a dice roll is not luck because it's governed by physics: it's luck, okay?)

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you go into a deity game thinking you have a pretty good chance to win most of the time then it's not hard enough. I guess I feel that you should need some luck in order to win (and paying hardcore attention to diplomacy should be a must at this level). Some might disagree, but I just feel that on this level if the AI isn't at least capable of crushing you by sneezing then it's not hard enough

 

[Mark1031]

Well it is certainly hard enough. I think there is no question we need to fight Shaka to win. We should really begin to come up with a strat for this. We will need to be the first to strike and Make a stand to wipe out his army. We can tell how big it is relatively by the statistics page it is now about 2.5x ours if those numbers mean anything. The luck is whether he will hold off until we are ready if we ever can be. I don't think we can out tech him so we need to fight at parity and probably 1/2 the army size. I'm not sure how that works out.

 

[ThERat]

I don't think we can out tech him so we need to fight at parity and probably 1/2 the army size. I'm not sure how that works out.

Actually I consider this quite fine a ratio, remember the AI is pretty inapt in fighting wards...we just need more artillery in the form of cannons, steel anyone?

 

[vra379971]

Just a point. Why oh why are you going to fight Shaka, instead of letting him come to you?

Your underteched, and outgunned...personally, I'd suggest you declare war, let Shaka attack you in your own lands where you'll have the advantage, then, after you bombard him to death, and he stops sending stacks at you, march in.

 

[Mark1031]

Just a point. Why oh why are you going to fight Shaka, instead of letting him come to you?

Your underteched, and outgunned...personally, I'd suggest you declare war, let Shaka attack you in your own lands where you'll have the advantage, then, after you bombard him to death, and he stops sending stacks at you, march in.

Sure of course we will let him come to us it is just that we have to be ready. If he declares on us in the next 20 turns or so (a distinct possibility)we are dead.

 

[vra379971]

Oi...that's true. Let me see if I can offer any advice...Oi..best of luck guys. Atleast you have a big, narrow empire so you ca limit the fighting to a small front....

 

[Mutineer]

As I feel we should spend GS on printing press, then next GS offer chemistry. We probably should go to nationalsim and dfraft a bunch of muskets.
If we hit his city rider mace with muskets, we can destroy this current offence befor he can upgrade it, it would be good. I allmost feel we need to destroy his current army befor he can upgrade it.

WE can draft 1-2 musket/city with out happiness problem and in time when we get riffling unhappiness from this draft dissapear.

We loosing overflow in capital, shift to more expecive units or some buildings.

WE probably in 10 turns of drafting can collect enogth force to beat of Shaka on defence.

 

[Blake]

Sorry about not checking in it's been hectic for me the last couple of days (12 hour drive and stuff...).

Amazingly it seems that every AI had chosen to Dagger which is why the tech pace is bad - or at least the AI's have been pursuing military techs. This changes now that they are into the later eras, they'll pursue the economic techs a bit more and build more infrastructure.

I'm not sure how we can survive Shaka. The way I see it Shaka is going to research Rifling soon (it's doubtful he has Printing Press for any other reason) and will then mass upgrade to rifles and stomp us.

IF we could beat him to rifles and mass draft them and get him to burn his SoD on one of our cities before the mass upgrade, we might have a winning chance. But if he gets Rifling first then those City Raider III Rifles are going to munch any city... even still as Maces the huge number of City Raiders he has will cause massive harm to defenders... that's the kind of stack you can't defend against, it's easiest to kill it in the open with mass siege, but I doubt our ability to get enough Catapults or get Cannons in time...

Moving on to nitpicking...

I notice there's no Taoist Monastery in Thebes which is rather (very?) weedy, Thebes pulls in around 40 raw beakers a turn (sustainable slider rate), so the monks' 10% becomes +4bpt, which I think more than justifies the 60h cost (being less than generous, the time to payback is around 25 turns). It seems weird to have a University but no Monastery - for the price of a University (200 hammers) you can get more than 3 Monasteries (60h each) - total of +33% science (more than the +25%). I'd probably still build it now even at this late stage. Don't underestimate Monasteries.... best research structure after Libraries...
Normally I think I would also push conf into the capital in order to get a second monastery, possibly even Judaism/Hindu for a 3rd and maybe 4th - the Missionary+Monkery package - +10% for ~100h is still quite a good deal in the capital, getting that +30%-40% research in the capital over much of the game really adds up.

Anyways.... returning to how to win... I don't really know. Diplomatic will probably be out because Shaka has freaking huge cities (his personality-obsession with farms does that...)... what might work is a strong focus on production and get a lot of infantry - if we have Coal, that could work. Factory+Coal Plant + Infantry Spam... the AI does however value Steampower somewhat more in this build (railroad is valued and coal is valued a lot more) so they may well head down that path to Assembly Line sooner rather than later and then we end up back at square one - no way to defend against mass-upgraded city-raper infantry.

Another tact could be to beeline steel and mass cannons and just cut it down in the open, this can be pretty brutal and cannons have good longevity. Since the AI is obsessed with city raider it's units are pretty weak to cannons (even the mass-upgraded infantry would be) and there are balance issues with siege (in short a mass siege defense is unbeatable). The AI also doesn't value Steel all that much so we could probably trade it around. Since the AI does bee-line Rifling, that means it lacks the critical techs like Corporation to start heading to Assembly line. There is a long grace period between rifles and infantry.

Since we'd be unable to utilize the draft to much effect without Rifling, we'd be pretty vulnerable... but we are anyway...

At this point "Cross fingers and beeline Steel" looks like the best gamble to me. If we can wipe out Shaka's SoD then we win, pretty much.

 

[Jet]

If you can deal with the Zulu stacks that are behind your lines, your chokepoint at Uppsala is small enough for either a solid wall of units or a trap. Also remember that City Garrison works in Forts now.